Are you ever really ready for your child to drive?

As you all know, I’ve been teaching my daughter to drive this summer. She’s doing really well at this point, not driving too close to the edge of the road, realizing that the purpose of a stop sign is to actually look down the road — both ways — to see if it’s safe to pull out, turning gradually instead of in quick jerks like she’s trying to swerve to miss hitting something. Still, she doesn’t quite know how to back out of parking spaces. I nearly had a heart attack last time she tried this and had to roll down the window to tell the kind man standing waiting for us “NEW DRIVER!” and that we would be a while and he should go ahead and get in his car and back out — quickly.

So, we had her go out with an instructor today with the understanding that if the instructor thought she was ready to get her license, we would schedule the test. If he didn’t think she was ready, we would buy more lessons.